<br></div><div>In short:<br></div><div><br></div><div>&nbsp;* The Fedora legal team reviewed the SOFA license and they considered it non-free.<br></div><div>&nbsp;* I wrote the SOFA board asking for a license change, they did not answered my request <br>

</div><div>&nbsp;* SOFA and (any program depending on it) *astropy* cannot be included in Fedora or EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) with the current SOFA license.<br></div><div>&nbsp;* astropy could be included by *removing* SOFA and the modules depending on it (astropy.time ?)<br>

</div><div>&nbsp;* somebody could package SOFA and astropy in <a href="http://rpmfusion.org/">rpmfusion.org</a>, which provides non-free/free-with-legal-problems packages for Fedora and EPEL<br></div><div>&nbsp;* or in a different Fedora repository that provides <br>

</div><div>&nbsp;* I think the situation in Debian is different<br><br></div><div>Not having precompiled packages available in Fedora/EPEL is very bad for astropy in my opinion. From a small sample of 20 Professors-Postdocs-Students in my Astrophysics Department, I can say that only those doing software development use "pip". The vast majority use "yum" in Fedora or "fink/macports" in Mac to bring in the package and continue doing Science.</div></div></blockquote></div><div><br></div><div apple-content-edited="true">
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Wow, the SOFA license **is** pretty strange. What a shame.<div><br></div><div>Could you get the time conversion functions that you need from NOVAS (<a href="http://aa.usno.navy.mil/software/novas/novas_c/novasc_info.php">http://aa.usno.navy.mil/software/novas/novas_c/novasc_info.php</a>)? Although you would want to contact its maintainers to check, I think that NOVAS is not just free, it's actually in the public domain.</div><div><br></div><div>Leo</div></body></html>